Question: While watching a circus show, I counted out the number of acrobats and elephants. I counted 40 legs and 15 heads. How many acrobats did I see in the show?
Let the number of acrobats in the show be $a$ and the number of elephants be $e$. We are looking for the value of $a$. Assuming that each acrobat has 2 legs and 1 head, and that each elephant has 4 legs and 1 head, we can set up the following system of equations:

\begin{align*}
2a+4e &= 40 \\
a + e &= 15 \\
\end{align*}To solve for $a$, we need to eliminate $e$ from the equations above. We can rewrite the second equation above as $e=15-a$, and substituting this into the first equation to eliminate $e$ gives $2a+4(15-a) = 40$, or $a=10$. Thus, there are $\boxed{10}$ acrobats in the circus show.